Radeon HD 4870X2 is still the only graphics card of the current generation to sport two graphics processors. NVIDIA has its GeForce 9800GX2 but this last generation card has never really been an option for the people looking to upgrade. We have known for long that NVIDIA was planning an attack on Radeon HD 4870X2, which has gained many followers over the last few months. NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 295 is expected to appear in January, and after that pictures recently surfaced, a presentation slide containing benchmarks has been posted.
The detailed specifications that it168.com shared indicates that GeForce GTX 295 uses two 55nm GT200 GPUs borrowing specifications from both GeForce GTX 260 and GTX 280. The clock frequencies of GPU/Shaders and memory are identical to GTX260, but the number of shader processors are twice as many as those of GTX280 (2×240). The design is about the same as previous dual-GPU cards from NVIDIA, but it is first now at the 55nm node that this is practically possible.
According to the benchmarks posted [source removed] it does look like NVIDIA has managed to reach its goal, to bring back the performance title from AMD. GeForce GTX295 comes out on top in all five of the benchmarks and in Dead Space NVIDIA has twice the FPS, which could very well be because of poor CrossFire implementation. The choice of games can always be discussed but it certainly does seem like NVIDIA has a real beast coming.
What AMD might do to answer this is a bit hard to say since neither RV775 nor RV790 has been shown to have any real substance, we can only only return to our original belief that AMD will give the Super RV770 cards another go, but this time with some better marketing and branding. Even lower prices might also be coming.
